All of the patents cited throughout this specification are hereby entirely incorporated herein.
Historically, pigments have been utilized as coloring material within crayons. Although these types of dyes provide good coloring throughout the wax medium, they are difficult to handle (powder or dust form), easily stain a myriad of substrates (including a colorist's skin), migrate out of hardened wax to discolor its storage wrapper or its handler's skin, and the like. It is therefore highly desirable to find effective alternatives to such poorly performing wax pigments. There exists a need then to produce a colorant which provides effective, thorough, and homogeneous colorations to wax, is easy to handle, will not migrate out of hardened wax, and will not clog a candle wick with solid particles.
It has been found that the utilization of ASA capped polyoxyalkylene colorants provide all of the requisite beneficial properties outlined above which are desirable within wax compositions, particularly within crayons. Such colorants are present in a neat liquid state at 25.degree. C. which thus facilitates handling and substantially eliminates any wick clogging problems. Furthermore, such colorants are extremely stable when dispersed within a hardened wax medium and therefore cannot migrate out of solution.
ASA capped polyoxyalkylene colorants are known as aqueous ink components, as taught within U.S. Pat. No. 5,310,887 to Moore et al., as well as within ink jet ink formulations, as in U.S. Pat. No. 5,621,022 to Jaeger et al. Moore et al. teach the process of making ASA capped colorants, as well as the utilization of such colorants within ink formulations. No disclosure or motivation to incorporate these ASA capped colorants within waxes is present. Jaeger et al. teach the presence of waxes in their ink jet inks, but only as carriers. Such carriers are well known to those of ordinary skill in the art as viscosity modifiers and do not become colored during the inkjet process. Furthermore, the ASA capped colorants will not effectively color waxes without the presence of a diluent surfactant, as discussed below. Therefore these patents neither teach nor fairly suggest the specific colored wax compositions of the present invention.